Guest post: Great mysteries written by women

These critiques of female mystery writers come from Jim Sherman, a friend of Bookish:

While I will take a stab at reading almost anything save a bodice-ripper historical romance or political commentary from a Fox news wingnut, the vast majority of my recreational reading tends to be either military/espionage geopolitical thrillers or murder mysteries. For convenience, I combine these two under the heading I call “testosterone fiction.”

A while back I was talking books with a friend with similar tastes and recommended a mystery by a female author I had enjoyed. My friend said “Ah, I don’t read chick lit; mysteries by women just don’t work for me.” A chauvinistic statement, of course, but one with some basis: in many cases, mysteries by women authors are aimed at and enjoyed by a predominantly female audience.

In addition, I have a tendency to toss books in mid-read over a glaring lack of verisimilitude that becomes willful ignorance. I call this the “safety-on-the-silenced-revolver” syndrome. As an example, I’m reading Michelle Gagnon’s The Gatekeeper which includes a scene where a pair of camouflage-clad ultra-rich ultra-conservative villains are discussing their evil plan for world domination while duck hunting. In the middle of the day. In Arizona. In June. They send their retrievers into the water to flush the birds into flight and shoot them out of the air. With rifles. If you don’t see any problems with this, you should avoid hunting scenes in your next novel. Hence my claim that there are times when women authors who haven’t or won’t research masculine topics should avoid them.

I daresay a couple of generations ago the most enthusiastic fans of Agatha Christie were women and it was men who lined up to buy the latest Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane. However, as mysteries have become one of the most popular (and, for the authors, lucrative) fields of modern fiction, a growing number of women have emerged to break through this literary glass ceiling.

And of course, there are examples of “chick lit” which for skill of writing (and, in many cases, humor) are as enjoyable as lunch with an attractive, smart, funny woman. So for fans of testosterone fiction, here are some examples of mystery authors who on one level or another might be called “estrogen fiction” and others who transcend hormonal barriers.

1. So, OK, Texas author Susan Wittig Albert would almost certainly qualify as chick lit. However, I am a fan of just about anything readable written by a Texas author and I am a fanatical gardener. So I absolutely adore Albert’s China Bayles “herb mysteries.” China Bayles was a top Houston defense attorney when at the age of 40 she realized that she was incredibly burned out to the point where the only thing that made sense was her condo’s window greenhouse filled with the herbs she had learned to grow from her grandmother. So she quit the firm, sold the condo, moved to the sleepy Hill Country college town of Pecan Springs and opened an herb store. 15 or so novels later, she is still there. All she wants to do is grow herbs and spend time with a delightful cast of characters, but alas, someone in Pecan Springs is always getting murdered and she (assisted by her Houston homicide detective turned college professor sweetie) are the only ones who can figure out whodunnit. About a third of each book is a wonderful guide to growing and using herbs in Texas; the rest is delicious Christie-flavored gentle mystery. My favorite of the series is Chile Death, in which the judge at a chili cookoff is poisoned in the middle of the competition and it turns out that (a) everyone in Pecan Springs knew he was deathly allergic to peanuts and (b) everybody in town had a very good reason to kill the son of a b****. Think Murder on the Orient Express set in Texas.

2. Some of my favorite weekends in the 1970s were spent with Navy friends in their ethnic-enclave New Jersey hometowns. So while I would bet that most of those who rush to buy the latest hardcover Stephanie Plum mystery by Janet Evanovich are women, this is my literary equivalent of Pringles. It’s not a fascination I exactly brag about, but there are times when nothing else satisfies. Sometimes, these hilarious and often bawdy adventures of the most inept bounty hunter in Trenton are just what I need. And her obvious love for the rundown streets and well-kept homes of the hard-working descendants of European immigrants – not to mention their not-so-industrious criminal relatives – reminds me of delightful weekends with the families of friends whose names ended in vowels and whose directions to their homes began with the appropriate exit from the Turnpike.

3. Susan Isaacs is an author that I made an all-too-common goof of mine with – by sheer coincidence. After All These Years was the first of her novels I happened to read and, so far, it is the best. She’s a delightfully feminine author – in a knitting-needle-buried-in-the-base-of-your-skull sort of way – who writes excellent and wicked funny murder mysteries set among the incredibly wealthy estates of Long Island’s Gold Coast. And much to my delight as a longtime fan of self-deprecating “Borscht Belt” Jewish humor, her humor – while focused on the idle wives of the incredibly wealthy captains of industry who commute from the Gold Coast to the canyons of New York from which they rule the world – has plenty of “oy vey!” moments. It’s interesting to look at Isaacs’ works alongside the Nelson DeMille novels with the same setting – such as Gold Coast and The Gate House – and note remarkable similarities.

Lisa Scottoline (Ryan Donnell/The New York Times)

4. The legacy of John Grisham is, of course, the number of attorneys from all over the nation who have become novelists. Philadelphia gives us Lisa Scottoline, whose crime-and-courts mysteries have created any number of lovable attorneys. Her books are a fine mix of the hilarious and the deadly serious, often from a feminist point of view. Many of her novels are based in the all-female law firm of Rosato & Associates; the humor is found in the friendships and rivalries of the various women involved and the serious is found in the cases they find themselves dealing with. The critical issues facing women since the beginning of time – stalking, rape, domestic abuse, gender inequality in a male-dominated world – have been the root causes of cases and crises dealt with by Bennie Rosato and her associates. One of Scottoline’s more innovative techniques is that while many series feature a recurring main character with a supporting cast, Scottoline’s novels tend to be written with shifting leading protagonists within the series, so that the beautiful shop-til-you-drop airhead in one book is a troubled and thoroughly sympathetic lead character in the next.

5. While Appalachian author Sharyn McCrumb has also written a delightfully funny series based in the Virginia tidewater about a forensic anthropologist who is the private investigator for an attorney who is just one of her many old-money dysfunctional relatives, she is much more serious in her dark, near-Gothic Appalachian mysteries featuring Sheriff Arrowood and the elderly Nora Bonesteel, who has the Sight and lives all alone on top of a mountain. I strongly suspect that McCrumb is actually an accomplished poet who turned to writing mysteries to make a living; at any rate, I’ve learned that if McCrumb mentions a modern American poet in passing they are worth tracking down. (This is how I discovered Kentucky poet laureate Jim Wayne Miller, whose “Small Farms Disappearing in Tennessee” is the introduction to The Rosewood Casket.) Casket is a loving look at the heritage of the proud people of these mountains and a heartrending account of the passing of this vitally American way of life. If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O is hands-down the best book by a non-veteran I have ever read about Viet Nam-related PTSD; I would love to know if the sheriff’s dispatcher who is madly in love with a totally screwed-up vet/deputy who won’t seek help is based on McCrumb’s own experiences or those of a close friend. It’s just too real and raw.

6. Often, the best law-enforcement mysteries are written from the author’s own experiences. Nevada Barr is a park ranger on the Natchez Trace. Last time I checked, she had written four novels featuring Ranger Anna Pigeon. Pigeon is a bit of a roamer, from the winter-locked wolf refuges of the Great Lakes to the wildfires of northern California. In keeping with the remote locales of her novels, Pigeon finds herself extremely isolated with small groups of suspects in the murder that has everyone on edge. This is up-all-night stuff – think Hannibal Lecter meets Swiss Family Robinson. If you like C. J. Box, you should put Barr on your must-read list.

Edna Buchanan (AP Photo/Jim Virga/courtesy Simon & Schuster)

7. Some regions seem to produce a bevy of mystery novelists with similar backgrounds. Robert Crais is far from being the only novelist in Southern California to have been a scriptwriter (surprise!) and I have no idea how many NYC novels by former cops and prosecutors I’ve read. In southern Florida, journalists steeped in the essential weirdness of that region turn to fiction. There is of course Carl Hiaasen, but first and foremost is longtime police reporter Edna Buchanan. In fact, I question the credentials of any journalist who hasn’t obsessively read her non-fiction The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Never Let Them See You Cry. Many of her novels feature Miami newspaperwoman Britt Montero, and not only are they fantastic murder mysteries that capture the sun-addled insanity of Miami but they are also an incredibly honest (if not flattering) look at the energies and intrigues that make up the newsroom of a major metropolitan daily. However, she has also written several stand-alone novels. It’s interesting to compare and contrast her Pulse to Connelly’s Blood Work; both are dark, engaging mysteries centered around heart transplants. The fact that Pulse hasn’t been made into a Clint Eastwood movie serves as proof that the glass ceiling is all too real.